I’m glad this genre of jokes finally made it the US just 20 years after we considered them old here in Germany! By the way:

The car in that video is a CLS, based on the E-Class. Why is this posted under a comment referring to a compact FWD 2-seater with 4 doors called CLA?

As someone who lives in Atlanta I have to agree with you. My favorites are 20 year old minivans with cardboard in at least 2 windows rocking 1 to 3 of those narrow emergency spare tires at 70 mph.

I only agree with you about the lack of speed control, which was neglect in both cases. Designing the Santiago site differently would have - as hinted by you - cost far more than the existing solution and additionally would not have made a noticeable difference. Even if they had made this curve faster, the next one or…

Mate, did you actually compare the topography of both sections?

Looks like I was imprecise there - I was trying to refer to the weighted death toll. On average, Europe’s system is a lot safer than the US’s. Santiago was a shitty spot that had to be fixed. That said, DuPont is pretty typical for the safety standard of US rail infrastructure.

First off, yes, I embarrassingly forgot about Santiago in my initial post even though it had been one of the incidents that immediately came to my mind when I first heard about it on the news and saw that it was a Cascades that had crashed out of a curve - sorry, mistakes happen. That they did not have technical…

I will not walk back that comment. The technical advances I am referring to are not limited to speed. They include safety systems to control train speed that were introduced as early as 1934 (“Indusi”) and have been installed on many major mainlines for many decades.

Considering that this country’s culture sees Christmas time as an event families use to enjoy spending time together and relief stress, there is a strong chance that many people will perceive the death of a relative during that time as worse. If we assume that the death of a close relative makes any human feel as bad…

Considering that China managed to pull off setting up a successful 12,000 mile high speed network in the last 14 years, I cannot fully agree with you. Naturally, for very long distances like Coast to Coast voyages in the US, the Plane is #1. However, there are many corridors left in the US in which high speed rail…

Little do you know about the outcomes of WWII in that regard. Existing lines were mended and re-opened, largely not even hitting pre-war average speeds anymore for decades.

Looks like my brain was tired enough to derail my grammar last night.

The opposite. Europe (if you want to generalize Spain to that) learned the hard way what can happen at the end of a 125 mph high speed line 4 years ago if you don’t have technical measures that help slow down a speeding train and took measures on how to prevent it. The US managed produce the same kind of accident…

That’s precisely why the infrastructure needs to be expanded and improved at the same time. Decades were spent almost exclusively expanding the road network while neglecting even the rail infrastructure that was already out there.

A self-driving train which runs straight into that semi truck parked across the tracks or into a landslide? You can easily pull that off in a closed system like the Metro in Paris but open-terrain applications are a lot more difficult because you constantly have to monitor the environment. Systems like ETCS (which is…

Let me summarize the bus topic based on my personal experience including a ride in recent Blue Bird school bus rented for a company trip. I’ll limit myself to the actual differences:

It really did indeed slip my mind, thanks for bringing it up. This one happened entering a major train station at the end of a high speed line - a scenario not too dissimilar to the TGV crash, in a curve that had nearly twice the speed limit of the one in DuPont.

Saddening news, especially just before Christmas. That said, the overall issue is pretty easy to describe: this so-called first world country’s railway system is outmatched even by India. As a European temporarily living in the US, for me it’s ridiculous to see to which low standard (other than axle load) this type of…

The German general inspection for road vehicles is called HU (Hauptuntersuchung = general inspection), the emissions test is called AU (Abgasuntersuchung = exhaust fumes inspection). They are typically carried out at once.

Yeah, right, as if trams like these have no brakes. If this was a heavy freight train, I would agree with your description of this incident. This was a bloody tram, though. The driver had more than enough time to brake and probably even crawled up to the crossing slowly when he saw the stuck car. Conclusion: stupid…